That made no sense to me either. There isn’t even one inch of Georgia coastline that’s on the Gulf side. The oil slick would have to soak through the state of Florida to get to the Atlantic coast.
Now, I understand it could be possible for the currents to take the oil slick back south, through the Florida Straits, and then up the east coast on the Gulf Stream. But Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida are in a much more emergent situation at the moment.
I wonder if fat-assed, greedy BP executives could be effectively used to plug the hole. :mad:
And one difference I see between Prince William Sound and the Gulf spill: the Gulf is a major tourist destination for many millions of people. The damage can’t be kept out of sight and explained away as it could be with PWS. Not saying that Anchorage, Kenai, and PWS aren’t tourist sites, but the Florida Gulf Coast is much more visible.
A bit of irony here. BP was one of three finalists for the 2010 award for safety and pollution prevention performance for offshore operations by the Minerals Management Service (“MMS”). I have heard that they are actually the winner, but I haven’t seen any confirmation on that.
I don’t really feel “sorry” for the marine life. What’s happening to the ecosystem is tragic–& this is all happening pretty close to where I live. But I’m not weeping for the oysters & shrimp, I’m just angry that all their deliciousness will be destroyed. People are part of that ecosystem–for good or ill. And I do remember that 11 people died.
BP’s Texas City Refineryexplosion of 2005 killed 15. And BP’s company policies were partly to blame. But the folks with Sierra Club stickers on their SUV’s weep for bedraggled birds, not dead (or grievously wounded) blue collar workers.
Hey, you live in Manchester. BP has close ties in your community, too.
The OTC (Offshore Technology Conference) starts up today in Houston. This is a giant annual event. One program change has already been announced:
There’s no reason for BP to not to do everything within its power to stop the flow of oil.
I don’t think that’s in question. The problem will come later. How will they shoulder their responsibility for cleanup and mitigation?
Don’t say it like that! We gave some of their executives a virtual award; itdoesn’t mean we are bosom buddies.
I was wondering how many British people are involved with the running of BP, these days?
I haven’t gone through all of their biographies as their website is running incredibly slow today, understandably. However, I believe that the vast majority of the top people are British. The chairman happens to be Swedish though.
Here is a good article that summarizes what BP is currently doing.
They don’t make missteps like that. I read yesterday, the slick will eventually work its way all the way up the east coast. That is without being hit with a hurricane. This growing oil spill will surely get hit by one in a few weeks. That will scramble everything.
I saw on TV a story that said 3 corporations are on the hook for the spill. Trans-ocean who is responsible for the platform. Their entire liability is limited to the cost of the platform.
Then BP and Haliburton.
They suggested, if Trans-ocean says they are responsible for the whole mess, and pay the 500 mill the platform costs, then case closed. BP and Haliburton can say it is not our fault, Trans -Ocean admitted fault. We have no liability.
That’s depends I guess. I see it as also in their best interest if they ever have a hope of expanding off shore drilling. There will be lots of finger pointing a law suits. None of that should take precedence over getting the sea and coast cleared up.
Transocean as well as the Texas company that made the failed Blow Out Preventer and their insurers will be squabbling for years over this. There will be other defendants too as the investigation continues.
Any hurricanes would likely be further out than a few weeks (depends on what you mean by few). I think in the last 10 years, the earliest a hurricane has made it to that part of the Gulf is July 6th with Hurricane Cindy in 2005. There have been a number of Tropical Storms that have hit in the month of June with I believe June 5th being the earliest with Tropical Storm Allison in 2001. The likelihood is that they have a couple of months before there is any real storm activity. Having said that, June 1st is officially the start of Hurricane season for the Atlantic.
Did I do that right?
Isn’t BP making themselves a silk purse out their sow’s ear? If I understand correctly, they’ll end up with another producing well with (potentially) the same dangers as the one that blew. At least I think the people in the effected area will see it that way.
Now I’ll go ahead and do what I should have already done, read the rest of the thread.
Peace,
mangeorge
Nope, Drilling a relief well:
So, you drill to hit the original well, then fill it up with mud.
You’re left with a hole that intersects the blocked original well, at some point above the oil reservoir.
Well, that’s a relief. (ha ha ha) Oh well.
That makes sense. They’ll drill a new well after they get this one stopped.
Thanks
OK, it appears that the general plan to intercept and/or stop the flow has been decided upon, and the industry site Rigzone has posted a summary:
Basically, the twin semisubmersibles Development Driller II and Development Driller III will drill a pair of relief wells, more or less simultaneously. DD III started drilling Sunday.
The Discoverer Enterprise drillship, pulled off its normal assignment drilling development wells at Thunder Horse field, now will attempt to install a cofferdam over the main leak point, which apparently is the end of the Deepwater Horizon’s fallen marine riser (note that the article erroneously says the cofferdam will be placed over the wellhead). The cofferdam will be at the end of a length of drill pipe that will conduct the produced fluids to surface, where gas, water and oil will be separated and routed to barges for transport and disposal. The cofferedam should be ready for deployment in about a week.
Depending on the relative success of the above scheme, the Enterprise may later try to lower its BOP stack onto the wellhead itself. If this can be done successfully, it will be possible to kill the well by pumping drilling fluid down high-pressure lines attached to the BOP (the marine riser itself cannot be used because it is not designed for large internal pressures). To my knowledge this has never been attempted with a subsea wellhead, although the technique apparently has been successfully employed on land.
Again, thanks for providing accurate updates along with your personal knowledge to explain things further.
So evidently, this coffer dam structure will have pipe attached to it to allow the oil that will be continuing to discharge from the severed riser to be pumped to a surface vessel for processing. Hope it works as planned.
The pipe running to surface should be more than large enough to handle the high end estimated flow from the well, so chances seem reasonable that at some of leakage will be controlled. There is at least one caveat: some oil is leaking from another point where the riser has partially ruptured, so even if this works well at the primary leak the best one can hope for is reduction of the daily spill volume by some amount. I believe BP is estimating they’ll be able to recover up to 85% of the daily spill volume if it works at full efficiency.
BTW, I’m fairly impressed if the riser is indeed only leaking at one other point, given all the bending stresses it went through when the rig sank. It really was never made for that sort of thing.